Carcinoma of the prostate gland ranks a close third among the leading causes of deaths due to cancer in males. Radical prostatectomy for the early localized tumor is the only known method of curing patients with this disease. While all prostatic cancers are curable by surgery for a certain length of time after they first develop, they produce no symptoms during this operable stage. As a result, only a pitifully small proportion of these cancers are discovered and referred to the surgeon early enough to be cured by radical prostatectomy. The great majority (approximately 95%) are inoperable when first discovered, and the patients continue downhill to die in one to five years, despite the palliation provided by orchiectomy, estrogens,1 or cortisone. The results from bilateral adrenalectomy have been disappointing, and it may soon be abandoned as a treatment for carcinoma of the prostate.